The railroad barons of China made their largest overseas deal ever on Nov. 19, signing a $12 billion contract with the government of Nigeria to build a train linking the eastern city of Calabar with the economic hub of Lagos. The train, which will travel at a nice clip of 75 miles per hour along the 850-mile route, will outshine anything the British colonialists ever gave to their African stepchild. But it’s more of a throwback to Mao Zedong’s China than it is to King Edward’s England.
China has laid tracks in Africa before — most memorably during the early 1970s, when it built the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority train from the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam to the copper fields of Zambia so the ore wouldn’t have to cross the soil of the racist government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). This helped establish China’s reputation as the new railroad king of Africa, with a little helping of postcolonial glitz.
While so much about China has changed over the last 40 years, there’s a surprising amount of consistency in its international rail plans. The Nigerian rail project is firmly in line with China’s policy in Africa and other parts of the developing world: make loans, build infrastructure, cement diplomatic ties … and be in a prime position for the resource contracts to come. This strategy has played out in such unlikely places as Hungary, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia. A plan to link the capital of Laos with the Chinese border, for example, puts at least 5 million tons of potash per year under Chinese control. And it helps business back home: The Nigerian deal sent the stock price of China Railway Construction Corp. up 2 percent.
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